


welcome to the family

by letterfromathief



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Party, Co-workers, F/M, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 18:33:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9001858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letterfromathief/pseuds/letterfromathief
Summary: It'll be the perfect Christmas party this year because they all can make it - all meaning Emma and Killian are going to suffer through this.
But hopefully they can make the best of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blondecrowns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blondecrowns/gifts).



> A ridiculous Christmas present for my dear @blondecrowns. Inspired by a Christmas prompt list which listed:
> 
> person a seducing person b into taking a few steps back/backing them against the wall (”oh look, how did that mistletoe get right there????”)
> 
> “we’re strictly ‘platonic’ but we’re snowed in omg we’re gonna have to repopulate the earth”
> 
> “we’re co workers who hate each other but you had too much to drink at the staff christmas party and admitted your love for me i don’t know how to act around you now”
> 
> PULLING YOU IN FOR A KISS WITH A SCARF
> 
>  
> 
> so of course i had to use all of them

If it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, then it’s his smug smile that breaks Emma’s carefully constructed self-control. The self-control that was, coincidentally, keeping her from breaking him.

“Hey, Mary Margaret, you remember how Killian said that he’d be going to visit his family so he’d have to miss out on the Christmas party this year? Well, his plane doesn’t leave until the 22nd so you’re just in luck, he _can_ make it after all.”

His eyes widen, smug smile dropping fast, and it’s Emma’s turn to make faces behind Mary Margaret’s back, those faces being a pleased grin and accompanied by finger guns “you stab me in the back, I’m going to shoot you in yours, never bring a knife to a gunfight, Jones.”

She sees the problem with this after Killian’s stumbled his way through another host of reasons he can’t go, all of them shut down by Mary Margaret’s unwavering enthusiasm - “If you truly have that much packing to do, I’ll come over on Tuesday and help you out!” After he insists that he truly doesn’t need that, actually he can pack all of it on Tuesday himself, and he’ll be ready for the party on Thursday, Emma realizes the massive problem with this situation.

She’s Indy here - and goddammit, she’d make an excellent sometimes professor, most times Nazi puncher - but Killian’s definitely Harrison Ford in the Fugitive, tenacious and hell-bent on getting justice.

“You _are_ wearing that elf costume I bought you last year,” Killian says just as Mary Margaret’s turning back towards her own office, says it loud enough that she can hear it, but quiet enough that Mary Margaret’s suspicions about his motives aren’t piqued.

“He bought you a Christmas costume last year?” Mary Margaret asks. She claps her hands together and exclaims, “That is _so_ nice. I really didn’t think that you guys liked each other enough, or at all to be exchanging gifts” - She blushes at her admission, not that she has anything to be ashamed of because it’s true that she has actually attempted murder at work the last time Killian interfered with one of her cases while insisting he was just being _helpful_ \- “That - that was so thoughtful. You must wear it, Emma.”

She gives her that look, the one that immediately cows Emma. It demands she be a part of this, not apart. It pleads for Emma’s understanding because this is important to her. It hits the part of Emma that can’t deny Mary Margaret the things she cares about, the part that truly cares for Mary Margaret.

It’s a dirty underhanded tactic that Emma would find dirty and underhanded if it was meant maliciously. But it isn’t. Her co-worker - Emma’s friend - just wants Emma to -

“Wear the costume, Swan. It would really make my Christmas.”

It wants Emma to really give Killian a reason to miss this Christmas party.

She shoots him with her absolute loathing. Her desire to murder him fights her concession, but eventually gives in to the unavoidable, and she says, “Yeah, I’ll wear it.”

“Perfect! This party is going to be so perfect this year. I don’t think we’ve ever had one where everyone was able to make it.”

Mary Margaret sighs happily as she leaves this time, and Emma watches her disappear before she whispers furiously, “I fucking hate you, and if you keep giving me that shit-eating grin, I’m going to actually make you eat it.”

“Strong words, Swan, but you can’t deny that the outfit isn’t cute. You really do look like that girl from Miracle on 34th Street.”

She opens her mouth to issue another threat, but - lightbulb moment, sudden realization, AHA! - she leans back in her chair and picks up the file she was distracted from.

Silence tends to work better on him. Her anger nearly made her forget. Emma pulls out her earbuds, puts her phone on vibrate, sets it beside her in case anyone needs to reach her, and starts to read. She feels him stare at her far longer than he should if he’s going to even pretend to look like he’s working but he doesn’t bother her besides that. Which bothers her a lot actually, when she looks up at him, and his stare is that fond one that usually precedes him doing something _nice_ for her.

In between their major battles always comes this interlude where -

Emma ends up face-planting in the case files after three hours at it, and even Britney telling her she “better work, bitch” can’t make her work. Her brain stopped working half an hour ago, actually, so she’s basically been staring at the same page listening to the Circus album. “You Drive Me (Crazy)” starts to play when a hand settles on her shoulder, massaging softly and then more firmly until she lifts her head and turns to Killian standing beside her. Gently, he pulls her earbuds out, and says, “You look dead, love. Let’s go to my office. You can update me on the case and we can work this through together.”

Emma gathers the pile, separating them in their respective folders and when she’s ready, she drops them in Killian’s open arms and puts in the call for that Thai place around the corner, the one that all Emma has to do is drop Killian’s name and their order becomes top priority. Emma isn’t sure how he managed it _still_ , but though she’ll insist again that he tell her, she isn’t going to truly look a gift horse in the mouth because she’s ready to eat a horse, and Killian’s office has a thicker rug than most of the offices, so her body doesn’t ache so much when she plops down on it and they spread the papers out before them, leaving a line for them to pass the food between without staining the pages with sauce.

He says it every time that they do this, when she gets off the phone and opens the door for him so he can carry both their caseloads in. He’s stopped adding in the part about not upsetting her, but he always says it, sometimes a jaunty burst accompanied by a peppy step and sometimes like this, all that fondness that despite their arch-enemy status made him offer in the first place.

“We make quite the team.”

It’s good that he dropped the apology about upsetting her because it stopped upsetting her two years ago, and now it just upsets that part of her she only feels when she’s cross-legged on his carpet, the part of her that offers him a smile and murmurs too soft for him to hear.

“Yeah, we really do.”

-

He’s running late, which irks him, generally, but today it makes him fume on the train - delay after delay because the conductor is holding them in the station, in _every_ bloody station and the train is packed to bursting with small children on a trip to the aquarium. Small children who were told to bring their own lunches, which obviously was lost in translation as they’ve brought diabetes inducers instead, and their sugary fingers have met his pants five times already, and he’s had to save the lives of two of them for running while the train’s screeching to a stop in the station.

Killian never wants to see a sour patch kid, sour patch watermelon, sour punch straw, and baby bottle pop ever again. He doesn’t even want to see candy mentioned because he’s still swiping at sugar in the elevator to his floor.

Killian heads for his office first. He’s supposed to check in with Regina, but he needs a moment to calm his head before he can indulge her scathing attacks on his ability to do his job, to manage in their field, to manage in his life, and how is he even _still_ alive - a question that leaves his jaw ticking every time and he folds his prosthetic fingers in a fist because she never looks at it when she says it, doesn’t even care that it’s something he’s asked himself often.

He bypasses their little kitchen to get to his office, and he pauses at the smell of heating coffee. He didn’t get a chance to pick one up and seeing the crowd at the station, tossed his homemade cup before the train pulled into the station, a fuel rush not worth having to change suits in his office because a jostle of a slung backpack, a stumbling person, or the push of people trying to enter and exit the train at the same time left this one covered in coffee.

“Oh good,” Emma says when he stops. She has her hair in a ponytail which must mean her and David went to the gym before coming to work, a habit she isn’t sure why she’s picked up, but a habit nonetheless.

“Good?” he asks, because that’s usually not a phrase she associates with him. Or a phrase she never does, except for the time she called him “good at being an absolute pain in her fucking ass.”

“Yeah, I picked you up some coffee, but you were late so I ended up drinking it myself. You’re just in time for the other one, though.”

Killian stares at her, probably for a moment too long because her nonchalance vanishes and she parts her mouth, shuts it, and parts it again, an act that she does when she’s trying to find words to explain away whatever tension, awkwardness, unexplainable circumstance - or better yet, find words to run away from those situations, a joke, a harsh retort, a dismissal altogether -

“Thank you,” he says to ease her suffering.

Or extend it because Emma parts her mouth yet again, and finally huffs, and says, “You’re welcome. I thought I might for once -”

She turns away to put the last touches on his coffee, and he stares at the stiffness in her back, which probably only keeps her stiff. Ignoring his looks is something she’s excellent at, but it’s harder, he finds, when the emotion between them isn’t animosity. Emma can’t handle when he looks at her with the way he actually feels. Although sometimes Killian does truly want to kill her, but that really diverts from his point, that being she has no idea how to respond to his affection, which is why he doesn’t press her with it. Just does this, watches her until she faces him with cup of coffee in hand.

It isn’t that her bringing him coffee is out of the blue. Quite the opposite, in fact, because she brings him coffee most days, except for when either of them needs to be in the office early or has to meet a client somewhere else, or god forbid, have to actually enter a courthouse.

He takes a sip at the coffee, and instantly jerks up to look at her, even as she’s trying to slip by him. He grabs her arm lightly, and she pauses, fixed in place.

“You used whole milk,” he says incredulously.

Bringing him coffee isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but to actually bring him a cup of coffee he _enjoys_ is. She likes to tease him with it, using half and half when he really doesn’t like the taste of the stuff. To be fair, he always plays along with her, tells her it's the sugar that disgusts him and drinks it with the sourest of expressions. But, she isn’t playing this time. Killian genuinely didn’t think she actually knew what kind of coffee he liked.

She doesn’t meet his eyes, and the longer she does it, the more his suspicions grow.

“How did you enjoy the other cup?” he asks.

Her brow folds until she remembers her _lie_ because she didn’t drink the first cup, and most likely, there wasn’t even a first cup.

“It was gross,” Emma says.

“Mmm,” he says and lets her go.

She flees the room, and he enjoys his drink a bit longer, his enjoyment deepened by her gesture. But he’s late, and after a moment, Killian heads to his office, only to grin at the little white bag on top of his desk.

He sets his bag down and his coffee before he peeks inside to see the black licorice she always calls a “disgusting crime against the definition of candy” when he requests it on the days she needs a sugar rush to get through the day and runs down to the candy store two blocks over.

His desire to eradicate sugary candy from the world disappears instantly. Emma likes sour patch kids, and he would never deny her that.

Killian will thank her for this later, in between exchanging hostilities. His hand brushes the bottom of his jacket and finds more sugar. He swipes it away and picks up his coffee again. The sweetness is exactly what he needs to get through this day.

Tomorrow, he remembers as he’s draining his cup, is another story entirely.

-

Tomorrow, actually, it’s alcohol that he uses to get through the evening. They’ve brought a bar to the office for the Christmas party, which he thinks was entirely of Will’s making. Killian is grateful for Will’s rampant alcoholism, for once, because the moment he entered, the atmosphere became cloying.

It’s so cozy, not the awkward meeting of co-workers that most offices throw to give their employees another reason to want to die. It’s exactly why he’s always avoided it by throwing together some excuse or another. He’s used to horrible office Christmas parties, but ones like this are a different kind of horrible, because all it does is make him ache. It’s been him and his brother for most of his life, and he’d long come to terms with having a family of only two - or three because he’s to meet Liam’s boyfriend in a couple of days, the first of Liam’s significant others that has lasted long enough for Killian to actually meet, and considering that he was supposed to meet them last Christmas until he actually got so sick that his avoiding the Christmas party excuse of being direly ill was met with no argument, this is definitely going to end up a three person family.

Although, most of the time it feels like a one person family because there are seas between Killian and Liam, and he feels cut off a lot of the time. No fault of Liam’s as they’ve had very separate lives since Killian gave up the Navy, but he feels it still.

And at this party, he feels this warmth that the office’s excellent heating system cannot match. As much as he can embrace it, it feels like it is wrong for him to do so. Killian’s used to not having anyone at all, and that he can have all this, all of them, it feels like a fluke and all it’ll take for him to lose it is acknowledgement of it.

The drinks aren’t watered down - bloody hell, Will has _connections_ and Killian has to admire how brazenly he uses them - and Killian’s enjoyed several. He’s warm inside, and it’s one he has no qualms about embracing.

He watches the room from his perch by the bar, and nothing draws his interest until ten approaches and he sees a red and white striped elf easing around the darkened edges of the party and towards the door.

Killian moves, too. Everyone’s attention is taken, so he reaches Emma without note.

“Shit, Killian,” Emma whisper-yells when he bumps her. She punches him lightly, only because his yelp of pain will draw attention, and says, “You scared the fuck out of me.”

“Sorry, love,” he says, and he’s genuine in it, because he merely sought to meet her and -

Do what?

He isn’t certain now that he’s looking down at her. She’s wearing the outfit he picked out for her, and as tortuous as finding this in her size was, he is supremely happy at how it’s turned out.

When he gave it to her, he agreed it was because he sought her misery, but she’s much like him, unused to spending a holiday surrounded by so many people who care if she’s there to spend it with them. After watching Miracle on 34th Street with him - another fluke of the universe because she let him into her apartment to drop off some papers just as the movie was coming on and she’d made a hasty, regrettable decision to invite him to watch it.

“I’ve never seen it. Have you?” she’d asked as he settled on the couch beside her, and they’d watched it in silence until the elf girl came on screen and the resemblance was uncanny. It also made him ache, to hear that she’d never had a Christmas even close to the one on screen, and he can see young Emma in that girl, and see Emma beside him, her mouth lifting in half a smile, but eyes downcast and not even looking at the screen anymore.

He’d left the silence between them after that, only glanced at her to make sure she was watching the movie again, and she was, but that melancholy still in her expression.

She looks good in the outfit, and he really isn’t thinking about young Emma anymore, because she looks _beautiful_ , actually, and he really wants to tell her that. Right now.

Killian is vaguely aware of her speaking, and he tunes back in to that, to hear her say, “So are you in this or not?”

“In what?” he asks.

She groans quietly.

“Escape. We’re escaping. I know I roped you into this to make you suffer as much as me, so I’m calling a truce. We both leave and save ourselves.”

She’s scooting backwards towards the doorway as she does it, and she almost trips on the threshold strip, so Killian catches her shoulders and holds her steady. He glances up as he does so to see the mistletoe hanging in the doorway, something he didn’t notice when he entered, but now he can’t stop staring at it.

Emma starts to move again, and he only reacts.

“Wait,” he says.

“Shit. Have we been caught?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, still staring at the mistletoe.

“Huh?”

Killian looks down at her to find her cheeks red and her lashes are fluttering, and she’s staring at him like he really wants her to look at him all the time - affected and affectionately.

He nudges upwards and she follows his gaze to the mistletoe, giving him a clear view of the blush descending and spreading all over her skin.

_Affected_.

“Mistletoe means you’re supposed to confess to the person you’re caught underneath with,” Killian says.

Emma drops her gaze, confused.

“No, that’s _not_ what it means,” she protests.

But he’s already speaking, “I confess, Emma, that I love the blush in your cheeks, and that it’s directed at me, hell, it just makes me love you more.”

And she’s explaining, “Mistletoe means you’re supposed to kiss the person you’re caught with,” but she meets his expectance, and all the warmth he feels for her, the warmth of the liquor in his system and the party around them is no comparison.

Her lips part, but not with discomfort, and he’s hearing her repeat, “Mistletoe means you’re supposed to kiss,” and he draws his hand up from her shoulder to cup her cheek and thumb at the dimple in her chin. He shifts his stance to account for her height, and leans forward as her eyes flutter shut and she gasps, ready to exhale into him.

Just as his nose brushes hers, she sucks in a long breath and pushes away from him. He takes a beat to realize - watching her back away and make her escape all alone.

She’s saving herself from this, and Emma isn’t nearly suffering as much as he is with the mistletoe hanging above his head, and the loss of her warmth leaving him cold.

Completely cold.

-

On the scale of panic attacks, this one is only minor. She’s had worse panic attacks before. This is nothing because the _something_ eclipses it, hovering over her like mistletoe.

She lifts her gaze from her red nail polish to match the stripes in her suit, and looks at herself in the mirror. Her chest is barely rising and falling. This is _minor_.

Emma exits the bathroom, and she is the Most Composed, clear-minded enough to realize that running away from the party was a dumb mistake. She doesn’t have to run away from her friends. They’ll understand if it’s too much for her. They always understand.

(She doesn’t understand.)

She bites her lip and goes back to the party only to hear “Oh my god, this is amazing!” and curiosity speeds her steps. Everyone’s staring out the window and she looks, and it isn’t amazing at all, her jaw drops entirely because of course -

“We’re snowed in! It looks so nice!”

It isn’t nice, Mary Margaret. Emma raises her head and that isn’t nice either, because there’s that mistletoe hanging over her again, and there’s that _something._

She drops her head and looks about the room, and she should be happy to avoid _that_ confrontation, but the snow is heavy outside and her heart seizes.

Did Killian go out in this snow?

She doesn’t wait for the elevator and takes the stairs up to their offices. Like her, he left his coat there, so he could avoid the conspicuous absence of his coat and delay the notice of his actual absence when he left. She makes the ascent in record time, and okay, she doesn’t want to dissect that. She just wants to make sure she won’t find him a popsicle, knowing the last time she saw him, she ran away.

It’s ridiculously quiet up here, and she should be happy to not hear the fifth remix of Santa, baby, but it just makes her too aware of her own worried breaths.

Emma calms herself down when she sees him. Well, first, she sees the black beanie on his head, and that’s worrying in a different way because he must have tried to run away, too, and it’s so unlike him. He’s Harrison Ford in the Fugitive, running towards danger -

Oh.

Maybe he was just trying to run after her.

His door is open so Emma doesn’t knock, but she does anyway, lightly enough to announce her presence.

He doesn’t turn.

She stops when she gets close enough to see Killian is still in his scarf, too, but he has the bottle of rum they bought him in his hand. His gloves and coat are on his desk, apparently the only clothing he had to remove to enjoy his drink.

Emma’s torn between amusement at the ridiculousness of the sight and tenderness at his brooding. Either way she should mock him for it. She follows his gaze to the snow falling outside his window, thick white flakes that almost obscure the city around them.

She’d mock him, but her gut takes her to his side instead, standing beside his slumping form. It’s only when he starts to speak that she looks at him, and Killian avoids her gaze as he says, “I apologize for confusing the meaning. Yeah” - he nods in agreement to words she doesn’t say - “Yeah, it was deliberate. I’ve wanted to tell you for a while. Seemed like as good a time as any.”

Emma tugs at the sleeve of the outfit, and upon realizing it, she stares at the red and white stripes. She painted her nails deliberately to match. If she had to wear it, she’d look good doing so. She looks good, but she doesn’t feel it.

“You don’t have to say anything, Swan. Your actions tend to speak louder than your words, after all.”

He sounds bitter. He sounds hurt. He sounds ready to sink down in his chair and embrace death.

“We had an office meeting on what to get you for Christmas,” Emma blurts.

He swivels to look at her, then, eyebrow lifted and eyes hazy with drink, but still such a clear blue.

“Seriously?” he asks.

Before he can say more, she presses a finger to his lips. She doesn’t have an explanation on hand. It happened, somehow, and honestly, she can’t believe it did.

“Everyone was at a loss for the first twenty minutes, and then Will had his lightbulb moment. Rum, of course, and hopefully you’d share it with him. Everyone agreed that this was the best idea. I don’t know. I just didn’t - you like rum, yeah, but that felt so empty, I don’t know. I didn’t really like it, but I couldn’t exactly say why because I didn’t have a better idea. Just a weird idea, actually. Remember that ship in a bottle we walked past after that case at the Surrogate’s Court? The case with the step-mom, her two daughters, and the deceased father’s blood daughter? Anyway, you laughed at it and said it was absolutely absurd, and you never understood the point of putting it in a bottle? ‘Is it supposed to be something like a message in a bottle? But like, as a ship for some kind of irony? Metaphor? What?’ and before you could go on, I told you to shut up because your ‘ruminations’ were giving me a headache.”

She lets out a breath, and somehow she’s still looking at him. Somehow she isn’t drowning in his eyes, and seeking air, an escape from that blue. Somehow, the press of his lips against her fingers doesn’t scald and force her to draw back to protect herself.

“But yeah, I didn’t say anything even though I thought you might like that. It was weird, and no one else was there so they wouldn’t get it anyway. They didn’t see your face. So, they got you that -”

Emma nods at the bottle in his hand.

She takes a breath, and draws her hand away, and points at his desk.

“And I stuck _that_ in your drawer, the one you open when you’re embracing death. I thought it might be a nice surprise and give you a reason not to embrace death, you know?”

Killian spins, and pulls open the drawer with way less care than he employs when he’s sober enough to worry about the treatment of his possessions. With his free hand, he pulls out the ship in a bottle. It’s the exact same one that he pointed at because she got lucky and it hadn’t sold. Well, he got lucky because he’s the one who liked the thing even though he protested about it for ten blocks.

“For me?”

He turns to face her, then, searching her for an answer, and she really doesn’t know how to give one. Emma just shrugs and mumbles, “Actions speak louder than words, right? Though I don’t know what I was trying to say, or I’m trying to say. I don’t know like -”

The bottled ship gets set on his desk and she gets pulled forward when his arm wraps around her. She falls into his lap and ends up straddling him. What she notices is far too many things for her senses to process, but she latches on the slosh of the other bottle in his hand.

“We spent a $120 on that bullshit.”

“I really don’t care about the rum,” he says firmly.

Emma grabs it out of his hand and digs into his jeans pocket for the cap. Her senses are overwhelmed and it’s hard to ignore how he’s looking at her, and she’s kind of sweating in this dumb costume - she’s in his lap, she’s comfortable here, and she doesn’t want to move. Killian must be hot, too, still in his dumb beanie and reindeer print scarf, his one concession to the holiday. Eventually her struggle with the rum ends and it’s properly closed, so he can drop it down on the carpet.

“Idiot,” she says.

She shifts a bit, trying to sit easier on his lap. He doesn’t say anything although he’s shifting under her as well, the hand on her hip flexing and his hips rocking just the slightest. Emma is aware of what she’s feeling beneath her, and it’s because she isn’t exactly unaffected either that she finally looks at him, and meets the hazy lust - and more than a touch of that _something_ \- with an expression to match.

Killian smiles just the tiniest amount, and he really looks upsettingly ridiculous and attractive in his stupid beanie, so she grabs his scarf and pulls him close enough that their noses brush. This time the touch doesn’t shock her. It makes her want to nuzzle closer until their lips press together, warm, warmer, _warmest_ \- and there’s the flick of his tongue against her top lip, the parting of her lips so he can slip his tongue inside - and he tastes like rum, which makes sense because he’s been drinking it all night, and he tastes like Killian, which makes sense because that’s who he is, but like, she can’t describe what Killian tastes like, not like she can describe rum, like besides what she can say of both tastes - _good_ , and she just wants to indulge until she passes out from it.

They’re grinding their hips before she realizes and his hand is sliding up to cup her breast which she is painfully aware of, her nipple hard and as eager for his touch as he is to touch. The fabric of her outfit isn’t exactly thin, but he finds it anyway, rubbing his thumb over her, and it’s so good. She draws away from the kiss - whose moan of loss echoes in the room is indiscernible - and rubs her face against the rough hair on his cheek. Emma likes the way it feels as he turns to kiss down her throat, the skin raw from his descent and bruising from the kisses, and his hand is still caressing her, his other so tight on her hip, but not to hold her still, but guide her movements, the rock and roll over their hips, and Killian’s zipper drags against her clit, easy, so easy when she opted for socks instead of the thick tights and she’s just in a thin pair of underwear that are going to be ruined very, very soon.

She pants something akin to his name as the sensation becomes overwhelming. The throbbing between her legs is unbearable, and something’s going to explode very soon. Soon, soon, soon - so _close_.

“I know we’re snowed in and it looks like the Day After Tomorrow outside, but the burden of repopulating the earth isn’t falling on your shoulders, so can this crime against my eyes wait until you’re not in the office?”

Emma jerks up, and Killian twists around to look. She moves past surprise and embarrassment very quickly when the speaker becomes clear.

Emma flips Regina off, but the woman’s already stalking towards the elevator with a visible shudder.

“Fuck her,” Emma says on a whimper as Killian grinds into her with more urgency than before, no doubt with the same she feels, to ruin Regina’s Christmas as much as she can by enjoying herself as much as she can, and if that means her underwear are going to be soaked, well, Emma can live with that discomfort for the rest of the night.

The increased pressure takes her over the edge in mere minutes, a broken cry on her lips, and she rides him through it, trying to draw it out as much as possible even though that could damn near kill her. Or kill him because he’s begging her for mercy, something he’s done quite often, but not with a tone like this, so fucked, fucked, _fuck_ -

Killian jerks up, trying to get as close as they can with the layers of clothes between them when he comes.

She didn’t say anything when she came, but she can’t stop babbling now that she should be less overwhelmed than she was in her pursuit of her orgasm.

It’s probably because Emma’s pleasure, her relief, and the triumph at _finally_ eclipses that. It’s that _something_ \- that feeling answering his.

“I really feel like I could love you right now, or maybe a lot more when I’m not sitting all sticky in your lap and when I don’t want to murder you for this stupid outfit, like this thing is sticking to my skin now, I’m so hot, this place needs to decrease the heat before I die of it. And like, how are you still wearing that beanie, how are you -”

He just stares at her, his grin so smug, and she swipes at the sweat beading his forehead and rips the beanie from his head, tossing it on his desk. His hair is at odd angles and she runs her fingers through it fondly.

The smugness drops away and Killian breathes out, “Could you love me?”

She sighs, and says, “Yeah, okay.”

Before he can reply to that because she doesn’t actually want to have this talk right now as much as she actually _does_ want to have it, she climbs out of his lap and steadies herself before she pulls him with her.

“We should go say our goodbyes,” she says to his confusion.

“I -”

“Because we’re both a mess,” Emma explains fully.

“Oh, okay, yeah.”

He follows her down to the elevator because there’s no way she can takes the stairs right now, and though they stand in silence, his fingers brush hers and she hooks his pinky around hers. It’s a little too cute for her normally, but she’s dressed like an elf so she can be cute.

When they enter the room, everyone turns to them and Merida runs over and claps Emma on the back, _hard_.

Before she can return the hit with an added “what the fuck?” Merida says, “Welcome to the family!”

Emma freezes at that, and Killian stiffens, too, and it’s with understanding that she slips her hand fully into his and says, “Family?”

“The family of people who’ve fucked at work!”

“...What?” Killian murmurs and Emma echoes that with a dropping of her jaw.

Regina calls out, “Did my distaste not make it clear that I’ve had way too many encounters with your situation?”

“How many?”

Killian asks the important questions.

Merida raises her hand proudly, as does Will much to Belle’s annoyance for she shakes her head in disappointment. David and Mary Margaret don’t raise their hands, but they’re guilty, too, probably guiltier because they avoid everyone’s gaze, especially each other’s.

Ruby clears the quiet with a shout that means she’s had a few drinks, too.

“Seriously? All of you have done it and not _ME_?”

She turns to look at Mulan, accusations in her eyes, and she says, “We need to correct this ASAP. Right now.”

Mulan looks to the sky for relief, but still Ruby drags her across the room.

She pauses where Regina’s standing, and says, “And _YOU_? Don’t fucking condescend to us. I know you and Tink were fucking when she returned from her trip. Bitch, there’s no way Tink disappeared after she entered your office. I _know_ she was under the desk.”

“Remember what you said about that escape?” Killian leans into to tell her.

Emma drags him and they leave to a chorus of displeased and horrified voices. Someone even sounds like they’re crying, which Emma truly understands.

“Ready to embrace death?” Emma asks when they reenter the elevator.

“Rum. I need more rum.”

She hums her agreement. They get back to his office and Emma realizes they’re still holding hands, something she’s already comfortable enough with to not notice.

A Christmas miracle come early.

They let go - and it’s their shared reluctance to do so that has her look at Killian. She licks her lip, and he follows the movement, his grin cheeky, and she grabs him by the reindeer scarf again.

On her tiptoes, she nearly kisses him, but instead she says, “Actually, that under the desk thing doesn’t sound so bad.”

Killian leads her towards the desk by his scarf this time, and when he has her set down in his chair, he says, “I quite like it.”

She hiccups as he lowers himself, and it’s difficult, and at first she doesn’t manage a proper sentence, just a breath, “Good,” exhaled and lets him hear her agreement for once.

Confesses, “This only makes me love you more, you know?”

Killian hums as he presses his hands up her skirt, and she repeats the question, “You know?”

“I know, love. I know.”

 


End file.
